Summary Of Strawson's Arguments

Assess and explain Strawson’s critique of Descartes argument

Peter Strawson is an English philosopher who sets out in his essay “Self, Mind and body” to argue against Descarte’s distinction between mind and body in favour of a unitary perspective on human beings which will be further discussed. Many philosophers have attempted to solve one of the major questions we can ask about ourselves revolving around the question of “what am I”. Rene Descartes is one the main philosophers who focuses his works in answering this query. Descartes’ arguments will be further looked into, where Strawson is introduced with his objections along with his contrasting claims.

To begin with, Descartes wrote his series of six meditations which was initially set out

He argues that it is not straight-forward to differentiate the features of the soul from features of the body. His main aim to the reader is to be sure of what we are saying when we talk about one another in an everyday way, what Descartes means when he says ‘I’, what he means by this is the mind/soul . Which brings forward Strawson’s position, he favours the unitary view of human beings- that the mind and body are not made of two different substances but as one-monism. Evidence of this is found in his essay- “…the history of a human being is not the history of one-two sided thing, it is the history of two one-sided things. One of these things is a material object, a body; the other is an immaterial object, a soul or mind or spirit or individual consciousness” . Strawson’s understanding of self-consciousness is combining the idea of a person which is distinguishable through “that which one call’s one’s body” and “material being” . Strawson sought to propose his conception of persons, and he does so by reformulating Descartes assertions. He proposes his argument, two subject predicate sentences- one having a soul as a subject and the contrast having a body as a subject. However, the philosopher Frankfurt proposes a counter-argument against Strawson that there are animals that have both physical and mental properties, but that are not